Shattered Kingdoms

Random thoughts. What would really help situations like this is if "good PvP" was somehow encouraged/rewarded and "[REDACTED] PvP" discouraged.

There should be more incentive to PK on equal footing (in terms of level and groups), somehow (this would admittedly, be hard to do, as classes like 1 necromancer are worth more than 1 of anything else). And less incentive to 9v2's, PK in levelling areas, PKing horribly underequipped people.

Currently, there is no reason to not limit your PvP to groups of 9 versus groups of 2, and it shows in game as the PvP scene has degraded to being nothing but the 'lowest common denominator' as it were, AKA lopsided ganks, level patrolling, etc. If I go 9v2, I still get the same loot out of the 2 as if I went 2v2, they still have to deal with being dead, and it minimizes my risk severely. Things like levelling ganks, massive group ganks, etc need to be discouraged somehow.

The PvP scene isn't competitive atm. At this point it's just a matter of who is smart enough to log off or sit somewhere safe when the other side is more prevalent on the who list.

Related, given the low playercounts, SK's death system needs a complete and utter overhaul. There are not enough priests or anything else to tend to the playerbase. It's almost to the point where auto-rez just needs to permanently be turned on after you wait to reach the river.

Maybe think of a way to make the resurrection spell better, if this diminishes Priests. (I doubt it will.)

I would be curious about how people would like to see "good" (which I assume means competitive) PvP can be encouraged while discouraging "lame" (non-competitive gank squad) PvP.


TacoRobot, given that you were not playing the game until recently and probably you don't die all that often, you must have missed it. We just did a massive death revamp in literally the most recent update:

Code Update 9/17/2016

Those are definitely a step in the right direction, and good to see.

I could very well be mistaken, but I believe the change to not have spirit disorientation on the Oracle's return to life may not be working right atm. I can't confirm atm, but I believe I've had SD after Oracle'ing, since returning. Can anyone confirm that?

And it really is difficult, in this sort of medium, to say how "good" PvP could be encouraged. Maybe someone in the community has ideas.

You can roll a character who always joins whoever is outnumbered, syn!

Can confirm. Didn't remember it wasn't supposed to SD, but it currently does.

I will try to look into that.

Wall of text incoming. There's a TL;DR: at the end.

I've considered ways to try to codedly encourage "good" PK as opposed to bad PK, and I've come up pretty empty every single time. Even with a system that would naturally be obfuscated, I'm hard pressed to think of a solution that isn't going to be ultimately wonky and/or require some sort of manual review. It's either going to come across as a "punishment" to players who only PK with overwhelming numbers, or as a "perk" that would severely benefit veterans only, as a veteran should have a much heavier advantage when it comes to PK on even numbers.

Ultimately, I feel like a coded feature should have to come down to logging how many PCs are involved in either side of an altercation, and weighting the "reward" for successful PK as a flat ratio: You would earn 2 Dank Kill Points for each kill in a 1v2 (while outnumbered) and 2.5 Dank Kill Points for each kill in a 2v5 (favoring the enemy). I think there should also be a severe drop-off if your group is larger than the enemy group, to the point where if your group is twice the size of the enemy, you earn a tenth of a Dank Kill Point per kill.

There's multiple problems with an approach like this, however. For one, it's difficult to weight properly and very open to abuse, to the point where it would necessitate a lot of manual review that I don't think anyone would want to do. For another, I can only imagine that there's a lot of potential for interaction that would be very difficult to codedly consider. Finally, I believe that it would be very difficult to determine a proper reward for having a lot of DKP.

To put it another way: I don't think it's possible to have a proper reward that is as rewarding as the victory of PK itself, especially when high-end gear is concerned.

My follow-up question to that however, is... is that such a bad thing? Is it bad that PK is so important that there's no meaningful reward to attach "on top" of it that would make it more attractive? Personally, I say no. I think that PK should be something that, while always available, should not ever be motivated by anything other than in-character actions, and any sort of coded reward built on top of that for "good" PK is only going to invite manufactured excuses for PK in the first place.

(To that end, by the way, I'm really not a huge fan of the HERO flag being tagged to your PK score, because even if there is some sort of extra weighting system as described above being applied, the pbase at large only knows that "more kills means more hero points" which fundamentally rewards bad" PK in which you have no possibility of losing)

Ranting aside, I think you should ultimately address the goal of why you would reward "good" PK and how you define "good" PK before thinking about an implementation. Fundamentally, I think that "good" PK should be encouraged because it should allow all characters involved to progress forward regardless of whether they won or lost. That might mean a surrender is incoming, or it might mean that the loser is still willing to fight and noticed some areas of improvement. If that's the case, then that means that "good" PK is primarily defined by the impact it has -afterwards- on both the winners and losers. Is there a way to code that? I think it could be elegantly simple: Create an in-game OOC command to "nominate" players whom you have recently PKed against for a reward, with a required line about why you enjoyed the interaction, regardless of whether you won or lost. Racking up positive PKs should bring about rewards on a consistent basis, even if they're just normal staff-initiated rewards or perhaps heavier weights to the "PK" aspect of getting Hero flagged. Free restrings would be pretty nice. I'm a fan of cosmetic changes that demonstrate the influence of the character perhaps more than mechanical benefits.

This may sound preposterous at its face on account of the fact that it effectively requires the losers of a PK to grant an additional reward to the people that just killed and potentially jlooted them. Some may say "This simply means that you're required to suck up to the people you just killed, but screw those guys, you just killed them." To those who are tempted to say that, I would emphasize that it should already be your goal to increase the enjoyment of all -players- involved in a PK, even the ones you are fighting. Obviously the characters involved are not going to be happy, but that doesn't prevent you from keeping the player themselves in a good spot.

TL;DR: Create a command that allows all participants of PK the ability to "nominate" the opposing side for PKs that they enjoyed, and implement highly visible rewards for those who exhibit a history of PKs that all sides enjoyed.

The reason bad PvP encounters happen have a lot to do with the fact that unfair numbers tend to happen from the bandwagon effect of the way the players act. This is not everyone but it has been a significant factor all the way back in the golden days of SK.
Something that might help this would be a way to give a leveling bonus (happy hour) to the aura that has less active players. This would make a side that is having trouble replace people quicker. Not sure if actually work to curb the bandwagon effect but it might. It would also be hard to judge who has the less active players given than there is often a time when one side is more active and then later that day it will switch to the other side.

There is no motivation to log on when you are out numbered. There is little praise given for someone who loses a 1 v 2. There is zero reward given to said player.
The cost of a death was reduced by significant world code changes. These being enchanting, players not being able to carry two sets of loot and ways back from death. These changes where promptly undone by the building placing items behind 30+ min group adventures to recover them. So on one hand you are working to make being looted less painful on the other hand you are making loot harder to get making it more painful. Basically if your the side with more players failing in PK is less painful and winning PK is more painful for the other side. Regardless of any code changes this will always be the way SK feels to the player on the less active side.

FWIW, I don't have any current plans to change PVP. Maybe this thread could change that, but I didn't go into this thread with any agenda.



For the record, I already did this years ago. And no, it didn't work. The victory system for CRS was a reward that appeared when the sides were at least somewhat close and the reward scaled up in power the closer you were to parity. "What victory system?" Yeah, pretty much. Nobody really wanted to go for a fair fight, even with some rewards available for it. Although I could have made the rewards even better, IMO it probably would not have mattered. People are too scared to lose (and possibly even more scared of getting picked on OOC if they lose).

Yeah, I forgot to include that topic: The CRS system is a great example of how the bonus was real, tangible, and actually pretty nice. Unfortunately, it still wasn't incentive enough to start a CRS battle when other people could feasibly defend.